Van Voorhis, Partridge lead young track and field team

SALEM—Brendan Van Voorhis started his senior track season on Wednesday, March 22 at McKay High School tackling something he’d never done—the 100, 200 and 400 all in the same meet.

“That’s really, really hard to do,” McNary head coach Frank Gauntz said. “It’s a lot of sprinting to do in one day. It was a tremendous job by Brendan to do that and he did really well.”

The toughest part is the 100-400 combination, which are back-to-back events.

After finishing second in the 100 in 11.36, Van Voorhis had just the junior varsity and varsity girls 400 and the junior varsity boys 400 to rest in between.

“I have a video of the race and I took off really slow,” said Van Voorhis of the 400, which he won in 52.77. “It looks really bad on the video and then you can see I picked it up. I just need to start that race with a little more intensity and that will drop my time a lot.”

Van Voorhis then took second in the 200 in 23.41 in his final individual event of the meet.

“For the first meet and for the first time doing the 1-4 combination, I didn’t think they were too bad,” Van Voorhis said. “They’re not really close to my PRs. I kind of wanted to be a little bit closer.”

Van Voorhis started the meet running anchor in the 4×100 relay. Joined by Isaiah Rhodes, Lucas Garvey and Jacob Wyer, the Celtics placed third out of three teams in 45.72.

Last season, McNary won the Greater Valley Conference in the 4×100 in 42.78.

“I’m the only returner on the relay team this year,” Van Voorhis said. “We’re just putting it together. We’ve just got some work to do on that.”

The boys 4×100 relay team isn’t the only event with new faces.

“We have a really young team as far as first-year track kids, even the majority of our juniors are first-year track kids and I thought they handled it (first meet) really, really good,” Gauntz said. “There’s obviously some things we need to clean up but as far as going out and competing, I thought they did a great job.”

But Van Voorhis isn’t the only veteran on the McNary track and field team.

Senior Cambrian Partridge won the discus in 99-02. Partridge’s personal record is 110 feet and she hopes to qualify for state and break the school record of 124 by the end of the season.

“The biggest thing is technique,” Partridge said. “You don’t have to have a lot of muscle to throw far. My biggest goal is to throw at a higher trajectory.”

Another senior, Alyssa Looney, took first in the long jump in 15-07.5.

Two freshmen shined in their first meet. Haley Hughes won the 400 in 1:06.98 and Caitlyn Kiefiuk Yakes placed first in the 100 hurdles in 18.16.